Digital Directions: Breaking Away 
From the App Herd

Maximizing the Mobile 
Opportunity

These three points are connected: A strong mobile app business model is created both by understanding the unique requirements of customer segments and by leveraging the unique characteristics of the mobile platform to serve those needs.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I believe the mobile device to be the most significant digital platform for publishers. The platform's capabilities have the ability to deliver significant incremental value to the marketplace to a far greater degree than the web and conventional e-books. This incremental value provides the opportunity to set and maintain price points for mobile offerings. However, like XML before it, a mobile app does not a product strategy make.

How to get started? Keep tracking the market penetration of mobile devices, and understand the capabilities of these devices, and the carriers that support them—but do so within the context of your specific customer segments. And most importantly: Get off the bandwagon, hit the streets and talk to customers to determine the best way to provide new value in the marketplace in the form of mobile content and services. BB

Andrew Brenneman is founder of Finitiv, a consulting and services organization that develops and executes transformative digital strategy for publishers and other content organizations.